and active throng which did work with a quick and powerful movement, almost in a frenzy, in conditions of heat, cold, physical and moral filth, for no legislation has been thought of to protect this mob of occasional workmen, who here to-day, will probably disappear to-morrow.
One beholds here an appalling kaleidoscope of types, a motley chaos of thought and feeling.
A young girl beside a murderer, escaped from prison; a deserter from the monastery, half monk, half vagrant, shoulder to shoulder with an ex-Government official, whom drink has led to the unloading of barks. A Tartar beside a Finn, a buddhist Calmuc beside a regular Orthodox believer, a typical, demobilised, depraved street walker from a great city hand in hand with an illiterate young peasant, who still dreams of lakes and woods of his far-away, sad village.
They load coal, firewood, logs, boards, fruit, barrels of fish or butter. Everything is permitted here except theft, which is severely guarded against The entire working throng must be working all the time. There is one break only—an hour at noon—during which the workers can feed and rest. Here characters are shaped in their own fashion; here primitive morality is transformed into dissoluteness among human wrecks, one time human beings; here is the recruiting ground of future gaol birds and involuntary settlers in Siberia.
The loading of barks and ships is carried on during the summer, and those hundreds and thousands of
